Jagged Little Pill
by Eve Davidson
Summary: Craig struggles with writer's block in Vancouver
1. Chapter 1

He knew he was good at it, the singing, the songwriting, the guitar. He wasn't a Jimi Hendrix or Eddie Van Halen, but he was good enough at the guitar to carry his songs, to win contests, to get signed.

It's kind of like the future professional athlete playing the sport as a kid or a teenager with all their spazzy friends, the clueless kid missing the popfly. That's what his friends were like in the band. He was the one with the talent, and it was unspoken and accepted among them. He was the one.

Vancouver. Living the life. Put up in an apartment by the label, and all he had to do was write songs, which he could do. Didn't matter that he was alone. He had to be alone.

His phone rang, and his first thought was that it was Ashley. He hoped it was Ashley.

"Hello?"

"Craig?"

It was Joey, and he felt that sharp dissappointment even though Ashely wouldn't call. She was in London. She'd ran from him, and after all the shit he had pulled, could he blame her?

"Yeah. Joey, hi,"

"Just wanted to see how you were doing,"

"Good, good," Craig looked over at his balled up notebook papers, all scribbled with half assed song lyrics. At the empty cans of beer.

"And Craig, are you taking your medication?" Craig sighed. He heard the trepidation in Joey's voice. He understood it, too. Joey didn't want to upset him and he knew the medication question upset him. Because the medication represented all of it. Despite what they said, Joey and Ashley and Ellie and even Angela, that medication meant he was crazy. He was sick. Broken. And could medication fix it? Not really. It just masked his true nature. Masked the extremes he had come to depend on.

"Yes, Joey," But it was touching to him, Joey's concern. He really had never had such genuine parental concern. His parents, when they were together, fought so violently that his needs were never paramount. And then his father always demanding things, be home now, do this, don't do that. But with Joey it was different. And getting genuine parental concern for the first time at 14 years old, it was still hard to get used to because for 14 years he had depended on himself.

"Okay, good. And if you need anything, anything, just call,"

"I will. Thanks,"

"Bye, Craig,"

He needed things, all right. He needed Ashley. He needed a brain that didn't depend on a pill to be normal. He needed to get past this writer's block.

Standing in his bathroom, holding the pill in his hand, between his fingers. He took the pills after he brushed his teeth, the nurses told him to make taking it a part of his routine.

"Then you won't forget," they said. Some of those nurses were young, they looked like high school girls.

Being in the hospital was weird, in many ways that was the worst time in his life. There were other worst times. His mother dying. His father beating him. His father dying. Manny getting the abortion. Ashley going to London. Jimmy lying lifeless in the school hallway, his blood spreading so slowly, and he had stared at that slowly spreading blood, not able to believe what he was seeing. But in each of those worst times he was in some sort of control, his thoughts weren't racing, screaming to touch the sky. He had been there, sad and shocked and hurt but in control. He had no control in the hospital. Do this now. Take this pill. You're sick.

But not taking the pill would help his writer's block. In that first rush of the manic phase hadn't the creativity flowed through him like a rapture? Hadn't he written more songs than he ever had in his life? And the song he wrote for Kevin Smith's movie, he'd been off his meds then.

He let the pill fall to the sink, watched it bounce off the white porcelin, little clicking sounds until it fell down the drain. He ran the water, washing it down.

Goodbye, little pill.


	2. Chapter 2

It took awhile for the meds to get out of his system, he knew this. He'd stopped taking them before.

He could imagine it, them, the drugs coursing through his veins and to his brain, the drugs that were taking his creativity away.

The songs he'd started scattered on his notebook papers around the apartment. Some on the kitchen table, some on the coffee table in messy little piles. All of them shit.

The phone rang again. This time he had no expectations.

"Craig?"

"Yeah?" He couldn't place the voice, some guy he'd met somewhere.

"It's Kenny," He remembered now, the drummer in a band called 'Rabbit Pellets' or something. It was another one of Leo's pet projects.

"Oh,"

"Listen, we're going to a club downtown, you want to go?"

Craig didn't know who "we" was. Kenny and his band, maybe? He looked at his balled up papers, his half-written, half-assed lyrics. He could feel the lithium keeping him even tempered and dull. He felt this empty longing for Ashley, despite her new English boyfriend and her bitter last words to him. Her words ringing in his ears, the ticket Joey bought in his hand.

"Yeah, sure,"

"Okay. I'll come pick you up,"

Craig hung up the phone, swept up all the loose notebook papers and swept them into the trash.

It didn't take Kenny long to arrive and he came in wearing a trendy little coat, his hair longish and gelled into a messy chic style. He wandered around, touching the glass coffee table, touching the suede furniture.

"Ready?" he said, peering at Craig from under gelled bangs. Craig slipped into his black leather jacket and nodded.

"Yeah. Let's go,"

The club was small, dark, smoky. There was music and it was loud. People bought drinks for him and no one cared that he was 17.

Late night and he was drunk. He slipped away, into a concrete hallway leading to the bathrooms, flipped out his phone. Drunk, lonely for home, lonely for his dead parents, for Joey and Angela, for Ashley. He dialed Emma's number because that's where Manny was staying. Manny who'd never let him down, who'd never rejected him, who never wavered in her love/lust for him.

"Hello?" Emma, her snobby little voice squeaking in his ear.

"Hi, Emma, it's Craig,"

"Hi," she said coolly.

"Listen, uh, is Manny there?" He had the sudden sinking cold feeling that she wasn't. That she was out.

"Yeah, hold on," Clinking switching of the phone and then Manny's voice.

"Hello?"

"Hi. It's me,"

"Craig!" Her squeal breaking up over the phone line into little bursts of static, and he closed his eyes, felt the world tip off its axis.

"Yeah. Hey. How are you?"

"Good, good. How are you? What have you been doing? Write anything good lately?" Breathless question followed question and he answered most of them with half truths and evasions.

"Look, Manny, I gotta get going,"

"Okay. Hey, you. I love you," she put equal emphasis on each of the three words and he didn't know what that meant. He was too drunk to know.


End file.
